An organization may have members, customers, client, or the like (hereinafter, ‘members’) that purchase and/or otherwise employ products and services (hereinafter, ‘products’) from among multiple lines of business of the organization. For one example, the organization may be a news gathering organization that publishes multiple newspapers, that offers related products such as a classified advertising service, an obituary service, a column service, a headlines service, a ticker service, and the like, and that also offers other products including catalogs, clothing, gathered information, and the like. For another example, the organization may be a financial services organization that offers multiple lines of insurance, banking line, a credit card line, a mutual funds line, a brokerage services line, a retail buying service line, and the like.
In any such instance, the organization may distribute to each member thereof electronic mail messages regarding the products of the organization. For example, and with regard to the aforementioned news gathering organization, each distributed message may be targeted to certain ones of the members thereof, and may be directed toward a particular datum or other piece of information from the news organization, such as a particular daily collection of news items to be delivered to the member, a particular breaking news update, one or more particular news columns requested by the member, an offer for a news product that may be of interest to the member, an offer for clothing from a line offered by the news organization, a notice that a monthly bill of the member is now available in an electronic form, a notice that such a bill has been sent to the member by regular mail, a notice that payment for the bill has been received from the member, and the like.
With regard to the aforementioned financial services organization, and in a similar manner, each distributed message may also be targeted to certain ones of the members thereof, and may be directed toward a particular datum or other piece of information from the financial organization, such as a monthly statement for a bank account of a member, a monthly bill for an insurance product of the financial organization as purchased by the member, a notice that a yearly premium for such an insurance product has been set, a reminder that tax information for the member is now available, a notice that a bill of the organization for a credit account of the member is now due, and the like, a notice that a particular bill of the member is now available in an electronic form, a notice that such a bill has been sent to the member by regular mail, a notice that payment for such a bill has been received, and the like.
In any instance, it is should be evident that even a single product from a single line of business of such an organization can generate a large amount of electronic mail messages being sent to the member, especially if each message is sent immediately when a particular datum for the member is available to be sent thereto. As should also be evident, if the member avails himself of multiple products from multiple lines of business of the organization, the number of electronic mail messages being sent to the member can multiply to an astounding level, again especially if each message is sent immediately when a particular datum for the member is available to be sent thereto.
Of course, the organization may consider the cost of each sent message to be trivial, especially inasmuch as each message is sent electronically and therefore does not require that postage or telecommunications charges be paid therefor. However, such costs for all of such messages over the course of a month or a year may not be trivial, especially when it is considered how much bandwidth much be employed to send the messages, the services, equipment, and personnel that must be dedicated to composing and sending such messages, storage space for storing such sent messages, legal requirements regarding the necessity of archiving the sent messages, and the like.
In a similar manner, a member of the organization receiving such messages may appreciate receiving same and being kept well informed regarding the organization and products thereat. However, the member may also find a relatively large number of the messages over a relatively short period of time to be excessive and even grating after awhile. Moreover, the member may also be required to devote considerable time to reading all the messages, and considerable resources to storing and archiving the messages.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method for sending electronic mail messages from an organization to a member thereof so as to minimize the number of messages. In particular, a need exists for such a system and method that consolidate multiple datums into each message. More particularly, a need exists for such a system and method whereby the member or the organization sets a predetermined schedule by which messages are sent, and each sent message includes datums accumulated since a previous sent message.